Cycling Races

13 September 2012

World Champion Jerseys

The Rainbow Jersey

A prize of honor in the sport of cycling comes with rainbow stripes in several designs depending on the discipline. A rider earns and wears this prized jersey for one brief year, yet wears the arm bands for a career and the title of World Champion tagged onto his or her name for a lifetime. A whole new crop of World Champions will step up on the podium this coming week.

Every September these jerseys are up for grabs as the best in the World gather to battle for the titles. Once won, these jerseys must be worn in the rider's discipline in any competition for the next year, only being trumped by a multi-stage race Leaders Jersey or the UCI World Cup series jersey.

A current list of who is wearing the World Champion Jerseys may be seen at this link: Rainbow jerseys

Competition for the new World Championship titles begin in 2 days, 15-23 September, 2012 in Limburg, Netherlands. The website for the Road World Championships may be visited here: 2012 Limburg

A Special Jersey - Paolo Bettini's World and Olympic Champion jersey with former Italian National Road Champion collar and arm bands. Bettini had earned the Gold Medal at the Athen Olympics in 2004, the World Championships Road in 2006 and 2007, plus the Italian National Road Race Championships in 2003 and 2006. Bettini also won the Points Classification at the 2005 & 2006 Giro d'Italia, but because the Giro was in May and Worlds was in September, we did not get to witness his world champion jersey trumping a classification jersey.

Team name and sponsors are added to these plain jerseys. Mark Cavendish of team Sky Pro Cycling is the current World Champion Road. His jersey is also constructed by Adidas because that is his team's apparel manufacturer. He'll wear this jersey for all road races, but not in time trials - that honor goes to current World Time Trial Champion Tony Martin of Germany who rides for Omega Pharma-Quick Step.

Mark Cavendish in his World Champion jersey (Photo found on www.sbnation.com)

Related posts by Pedal Dancer: How to become a Champion (2011) about Mark Cavendish) and UCI Road World Championship results (2011)Update 17 September 2012: 2012 saw a Team Time Trial event at the World Championships. The event was organized by trade team - a six-man squad racing for their team. The honor is awarded to the team and stays with the team for the year. This is the reason why rainbow jerseys were not awarded to the six individuals who raced and earned the title, instead they were given individual medals and the entire team will wear a small UCI rainbow logo on their team jersey for all races (road and TT) in 2012-2013. The happy winners in 2012 were Tony Martin, Sylvain Chavanel, Peter Velits, Tom Boonen, Kristof Vandewalle, and Niki Terpstra of team Omega-Pharma-Quickstep. Read a good explanation of the worlds team time trial by The Inner Ring at The Worlds Team Time Trial ExplainedThe new World Championships Team Time Trial Medal (tweeted by Tom Boonen):

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